Apparently, a Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed that “you will not need to reinstall an older version of Windows before using an Windows 7 upgrade disk.” Awesome right? No, not really. The problem is that you will not be able keep your current programs and data using this method. Instead, you are performing a “custom installation” that will herd all of your personal files into a folder labled “WINDOWS.OLD.” The items in that folder are dead to the world, so you will have to reinstall—essentially making it more like a fresh install than an upgrade. However, since you don’t have a full copy you would have to install XP or Vista first then upgrade to Win 7 should you ever have to reinstall down the line.

Yeah, it’s kind of a hassle, but we can always hope that the process will be simplified before it goes live on October 22nd. [TechBlog]

I mean, such labelling would play right into detractor’s hands.

Regardless, Hodgman has been dispatched. New Apple I’m a Mac ad is imminent. [Amazon Windows 7 Resource Center - Thanks, Matthew]

Odds are, you won’t pay the official prices, so I’m telling you the launch specials first. If you play your cards right, you’ll either get it as a free upgrade for buying a PC, or you’ll pay $US50 for Win 7 Home Premium and $US100 for Win 7 Professional.

Free Upgrades
If you buy a PC starting Friday, June 26th, it should be covered under a free upgrade plan. (I say “should” because it depends on the manufacturer, but most of them are jumping on this with both feet.) Say you buy a computer with Vista Home Premium this weekend; you get a Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade on October 22, free. If you buy Vista Business, you’ll get Win 7 Professional, and if you buy Vista Ultimate, you’ll get Win 7 Ultimate. There’s no upgrade path for Home Basic (the reason is below) but as I understand it, the number of systems sold at retail with Home Basic on it are in the low single digits.

That should take care of most PC buyers.

The Half-Price Pre-Order Deal
People in the US, Canada or Japan who already own a PC running XP or Vista will be able to pre-order the upgrade disc at around half the price that they’ll eventually sell for. The pre-order deal also starts Friday, June 26th, and will run for a limited time.

As I said, Windows 7 Home Premium, usually $US120, will cost $US50, and Windows 7 Professional, usually $US200, will cost $US100. Windows 7 Ultimate is not part of this discount plan, but it might get its own incentive plan later on. (You could technically buy Home Premium upgrade, then pay to convert it to Ultimate, saving at least a little cash.) The pre-order deal will be visible at store.microsoft.com and at “most major retailers.”

What’s this about a limited time? Mike Ybarra, general manager of Windows Product Management, told me that the pre-order deal will go away when a certain undisclosed number of licenses is sold. “We have enough quantity,” he said, adding that the magic number was “equivalent to a year of Vista sales volume at retail.” (Ironically, those of you who want this upgrade offer to last have to hope that the Mojave Experiment worked, at least a little.) Some Microsoft materials suggest that July 11th might be the cutoff for the deal, but from what I understand, that’s an estimate—this is based on supply. Regardless, if you want Windows 7, pre-order the damn thing come Friday.

European Hijinks
Europe is getting kinda screwed in this deal, because of the European Commission’s banning of IE8 from any Windows installer media. Basically, starting July 15th in France, Germany and the UK, Microsoft will be selling full versions of Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional at the discounted upgrade prices, but that means there’s no way to upgrade directly from Vista.

Euros who buy Win 7 will be forced to perform a clean install, and migrate their data and apps over any way they know how. The logic is that, while the Windows team can do a clean install without IE8, there’s not enough quality assurance on what an upgrade install would be like without IE8, with assorted HTML rendering apps co-existing in the OS already. Could be messy, says Ybarra. “We don’t want to break anyone else’s software, we don’t want to break our own software, and we don’t want the customer on the phone with support.” That funky deal is supposed to run through December.

The Official Prices
So, now that we got the immediate realities out of the way, here are the “estimated retail prices” that we’ll eventually see in stores, for the people who aren’t yet moving on the upgrade offers:

Windows 7 Home Premium: $US120 for upgrade; $US200 for full version
Windows 7 Professional: $US200 for upgrade; $US300 for full version
Windows 7 Ultimate: $US220 for upgrade; $US320 for full version

To be clear, the term “upgrade” just means you already own and run a version of Windows on the PC you’re upgrading. It’s still a complete set of bits that you can clean install and even set up for dual booting. The “full” version is mostly for people who are building their own systems.

You may remember that there are other Win 7 SKUs such as Home Basic and Starter. Windows 7 Home Basic is not available in the United States or most of Europe though, along with residents of Burkina Faso and Vanuatu, Montenegrans will be able to buy it.

Windows 7 Starter will be offered to Dell, HP, Asus and other manufacturers to stick on netbooks. Just in case you were concerned, Windows XP will also be available, distributed and supported for 12 months after Windows 7 launches though limited to these same “small notebook PCs.” I think Microsoft—and quite a few non-vested-interests—are expecting netbooks to ditch XP for Win 7 pretty fast.

When You Actually Get It
As we’ve previously reported, October 22 is the day when almost everybody gets Windows 7. Anyone, anywhere in the world, in 35 different languages, will be able to buy a Windows 7 PC on October 22. The actual box of software will be available in most countries, covering 14 languages, on the 22nd, with the other 21 languages getting their retail boxes by October 31. It’s a damn fast rollout, especially given all of the terrain it’s going to cover.

Stay tuned, because we’re going to post more details on this pre-order business soon. In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. Is this a good deal? Is it crap? And most importantly, are you going to pony up cash on Friday? [Windows Blog]

In short, if you buy a PC at Best Buy starting on June 26th, you’re guaranteed a free copy of Windows 7 when it comes out on October 22nd. Not a bad deal! Unless you’re Best Buy and are hoping to sell some computers in the next three weeks, which no well-informed customers will do now.

As for the trash talking, you’ve gotta love the first graf:

“Microsoft is launching Windows 7 in mid-October 2009. This new operating system isn’t just a “Vista that works” program – it’s a new operating system with improved productivity, functionality and creativity that uses less computer resources.”

Nice work, Best Buy. In any case, if you’re in the market for a new PC, it probably pays to wait until after the 26th if you don’t want to pay for Windows 7 in October. [Engadget]

First, let’s focus on what the X340 gets right. It’s a 13-inch (16×9, 1366×768) laptop that weighs just 1.3kg with its 4-cell battery. It measures 1.98cm at its thickest point and 0.61cm at its thinnest. (The MacBook Air measures but 1.93cm at its thickest point and 0.41 at its thinnest.) In real life application, the X340 seems a tad bulkier than specs might reveal because the tapering isn’t as dramatic as the Air’s. But it’s still thin.

The 1.4GHz Core2 Solo processor is quite a bit faster than your average Atom, and its HDMI I/O port and draft n Wi-Fi are a welcome addition to such a tiny machine.

OK, now for the bad stuff.

The keyboard feels dreadful. Not only are the keys…mushy…the centre of the keyboard literally bends while you type. It’s frightening to watch and extremely disconcerting as you wonder if they next keypress will greet your fingertips with a charged circuit board.

As for the remainder of the machine, it doesn’t feel much better. The only way to describe the plastic body is “cheap.” Not only does the glossy black finish reveal a strange, flecked iridescence under light, tap on the palm wrests with your knuckle and something about the hollowness of the pitch assures you that it could easily crack under a moderate amount of pressure.
Molding the trackpad into the case…that was a bad idea. The surface simply doesn’t feel lacquered as a working trackpad. Literally, it feels unfinished, like someone on the assembly line went on break instead of gluing on the proper touch sensitive rectangle.

When you hold the Air, it’s an incredible sensation not just because of its size but because of how sturdy it feels at its size. The X340 misses the pleasure of this dichotomy and gives us what I’m willing to wager is the most fragile laptop I’ve ever put my hands on.

Performance
Believe it or not, while the X340 is burdened by Vista’s heavy footprint, it’s quite usable. General navigation seems infinitely faster than running Vista on a true netbook, like the Dell Mini 12. The benchmarks support the fairly fluid experience of the OS.
The X340 is clearly closer to a netbook than the MBA in performance, but that performance gap between netbook and X340 is definitely noticeable in your general day to day experience of loading apps.

The X340’s graphics chip is the Intel GMA X4500MDH. All you really need to know is that this architecture is nowhere near as good as NVIDIA’s 9 series stuff, like the 9400M. And it’s not powerful enough for heavy gaming (the 9400M is already scraping the barrel pretty hard). You can see the two platforms side by side here:

Still, MSI claims that the system can handle smooth 1080P playback. Can it? In a word, no. Neither HD web content (like Vimeo) nor 1080P MPEG4 played back smoothly on the system. The Blu-ray quality MPEG4 probably never broke 15fps.

In reality, the X340 performs up to most of my expectations (since I never believed it could handle 1080P clips anyway). Just don’t expect it to be some sort of dream multimedia machine. In that regard, the X340 is like a netbook on steroids—fine for general use, just not juiced up enough to handle the next tier of graphics-intensive operations.

The battery lasted 1 hour, 43 minutes – ouch*
You could probably stretch the life beyond two hours with a few tweaks, like gimping the processor or squinting at the screen, but if you’re planning on watching a movie during your next flight, it’d better be from the 90-minute Pauly Shore Archives.
*MPEG 4 playback, Wi-Fi on, screen at full brightness, “balanced” performance. You can purchase an 8-cell battery that should hit 3 hours for a bit more weight

The Sad Conclusion
I should be thrilled with the X340. It’s lighter than many netbooks that have smaller screens. While not as tailored as the MacBook Air, hey, it’s damn close. It also runs Vista at a reasonable speed.

The problem is, I just can’t look at this machine, as thin and light as it may be, and feel good about dropping nearly $1000 to make one mine. If the X340 were much cheaper (unlikely) or sturdier (quite feasible), there’s a good chance I’d be thrilled in this review. I just can’t imagine showing this machine off to a friend, or getting extreme satisfaction when pulling it out of a bag. And if I’ve lost those attributes, I might as well settle for a somewhat thin full-blown laptop for less money, or a very light netbook for even less money.

But if you’re looking purely for the lightest way to fit a 13-inch screen into your bag that’s waaayyyy cheaper than the Air, and you only want to use a computer for 1 hour and 34 minutes at a time, then I’m not stopping you.

Extremely light and thin form

Runs Vista adequately

Short battery life

Weak for multimedia applications

Unreasonably poor build quality

[Additional research from Geekbench]

Their conclusion:

Platter based hard drives and high-end solid state drives, all run faster on Windows 7. Solid state drives see the largest performance boost, which showed up to a 35% improvement in read performance and up to a 23% boost in write performance.

They also found serious jumps in burst read performance, which explains why, given a general speed difference of about a third, Windows 7 feels so much quicker than Vista or XP. Obviously, they weren’t testing the netbook edition, but I doubt this particular metric will differ between versions. Convinced yet? [HotHardware via Slashdot]

Windows Vista SP2 is finally available for download, in all its apologetic, bug-fixing, compatibility-boosting glory. Windows Update should do the trick, but standalone downloads are hosted right here, and release notes are over here. [Neowin]